Author Marianna Nash

Every generation has its pop culture purists, the ones who “discover” an artist before they are famous. When they’re Green Day fans, you laugh – but when you’re the connoisseur in question, sharing your niche love can be difficult.

When asked how she felt about the ongoing campaigns, Sigourney Weaver (“Aliens,” “Gorillas in the Mist”) put it delicately: “I think it’s a pretty daunting thing to watch. It’s our dysfunctional political process front and center, and I actually think it’ll be one of the reasons people will tune into ‘Political Animals.’ As dysfunctional as we are, it’s fiction.”

Those familiar with Sarah Silverman’s envelope-pushing brand of comedy might be surprised to hear of her forays into drama. She might not seem the safest choice for playing Seth Rogen’s wise sister in new comedy/drama “Take This Waltz,” but Canadian director Sarah Polley and casting director John Buchan were willing to take that risk.

“When you are portraying somebody that has a very specific emotional weight, you feel like you’re really starting to abandon your own body and go to someplace else. And then when you come back to yourself, people that know you well, they ask, ‘Why did you say that?’ or ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘Why are you behaving this way?’ But you don’t realize. Because it’s so unconscious, you don’t have control over it,” he said.